Twitter doesn’t seem to be a passing fad. We get the distinct feeling that it’s going to be around for some time, with engagement in Twitter forming something of a backdrop to modern life.

There’s wide array of apps out there to make that experience what you want it to be, from third-party apps to those from the company itself. Today we’re looking at a nice take on Twitter, adding a little visual panache.

Carbon for Twitter

Carbon for Twitter brings you a Twitter client that steps away from the blue hues of many, giving you a moody, dark, Twitter experience. Much of what Carbon for Twitter offers is around the visuals and there’s certainly a lot to like.

Carbon for Twitter, as the name suggests, gives you a predominantly black theme, with whites and grey for the main tweet listings, and most of the navigation options.

The main run of your Twitter feed is very much as you’d expect it, with images falling into place so you can glance and see if you’re interested. There’s pull to refresh, with a nice indicator of how many new tweets you have to churn through.

Tapping on a tweet takes you through to it, giving you options to favourite, retweet or quote, as well as replying to the author. You also get option to share a tweet (through any other sharing options on Android), copy the tweet or copy a link, all useful stuff.

If you don’t want that many options, a long press on a tweet will simply give you those basic options of retweeting, quoting and favouriting.

Tap on an individual and their stats will be pulled up. It’s slick movement from one area of Carbon for Twitter to another, with that user’s Twitter image bleeding into the background, while essential stats are displayed.

You can see if someone is following you, add them to a list, and report spam. If you don’t want to offend that nauseating bore at the office, you can filter out their tweets, so you’ll still be following, but not listening. You can also opt to filter hashtags, great for managing your timeline.

Conversation views are nicely handled, with the conversation dropping into sequence beneath the selected message so you can read through the sequence. We really like the way the message you selected cocks to one side in the background of what you’re reading.

Composing a message is a breeze, with a nice large display showing how many characters you have left. You can easily attach images to your tweets, although we found the app often crashed when telling it to take a photo using the camera on the Nexus 4 we tested it on.

There are notifications, however we found that this was one area where Carbon for Twitter needs work. This is a first release of the app, which the developers acknowledge, so there are some places where we found it lacking.

Auto refresh is set at 15 mins and we couldn’t find a way to change this. That wasn’t the problem though, as we found it didn’t auto refresh, instead waiting for manual refresh. That’s not the end of the world in your main timeline, but when it came to replies, we found the it rarely alerted us, despite being set up to do so.

Overall, Carbon for Twitter is a great take on Twitter and well worth a look if you fancy something a little different, but as it's brand new, there are some rough edges. It’s free and available on Google Play now.